Day long hartal in Assam over amended citizenship act which facilitates immigration

Dispur, Assam January 8 (Indian Express): With the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) exiting the BJP-led coalition on Monday, things have come to a boil in Assam over the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2016, which was cleared by the Union cabinet earlier in the day.

In protest, the entire Northeast is observing an 11-hour bandh on Tuesday from 5 am to 4 pm. “This is the first time in ten years that the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) is calling for a bandh,” said AASU General Secretary Lurin Jyoti Gogoi. “We don’t mean create inconvenience for anyone through bandhs. But the situation is so grave that we have been left with no other alternative,” he added.

This is also the first time since independence that the entire Northeast region will observe a unified bandh, he said. The North East Students’ Union (NESO) — the umbrella student body representing all the states — has also called for the bandh across seven northeastern states, which is being supported by the AGP, the Congress and 30 other ethnic organisations from Assam. The decision was taken right after PMNarendra Modi’s rally at Silchar on January 4, where he stated that the Bill will be passed by the Parliament soon.

The main grouse of the opposers is that they fear the Bill — which seeks to amend the Citizenship Act 1955 by granting citizenship to Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Christians and Parsis from Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan — will destroy Assam, which has been grappling with the issue of ‘illegal immigration’ for decades now. The Bill effectively allows anyone belonging to the above-mentioned groups to seek citizenship in India, as long as they have entered Indian before December 31, 2014. The opposers also feel this contradicts the ongoing update of the National Registry of Citizens (NRC) which takes into consideration March 24, 1971, as the cut-off date for citizenship in Assam. In May 2018, a Joint Parliamentary Committee was sent to Assam to take stock of the opposition and support to the Bill.

While the bandh will come into effect only at 5 am tomorrow, in parts of Assam, riled by protests over the past week, things have already come to a standstill as shopkeepers in parts of Jorhat reportedly pulled shutters down early Monday evening.

A huge gathering — of intellectuals, students, activists, scholars, politicians as well as citizens — took place in Guwahati on Monday afternoon. KMSS members also stripped and staged a protest in New Delhi.

On Sunday, a group of women protestors — having no political affiliation — reportedly thronged the BJP state headquarters in Guwahati demanding the Bill be scrapped. In Dibrugarh, Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal was greeted with black flags by the Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS) when he came to attend an Asom Sahitya Sabha function.

“We have been protesting for months now — not just in Guwahati, but in the remoter corners of the state. Tomorrow’s bandh is called by the AASU and we are extending our support wholeheartedly,” said a KMSS member. The student bodies from Manipur, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh have also asked people of their respective states to observe the bandh in “a bid to save their indigenous communities from extinction”.

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